There were rocks beneath her.
Black stones, or coal or whatever it was dug from earth, she had no idea what they were for. She had been here for hours trying to assess her situation, and in all her gloom, these unidentified –crumpled -hard - black- things beneath her feet, seemed to add another reason to why life made little sense. She looked at the metal along the rocks; angled on its side like a fallen ladder. It was rusted from a natural reaction, but its rungs and parts seemed so strong and held well together.
How come I can’t be strong like that? She pondered, as though she was missing an important part of what made people resilient… what made them happy.
For a moment she reflected, staring at the rusted metal, she dove within herself searching for something that resembled her. She searched for anything that would give the indication that she was Kelly Vernon; that she was once someone important, someone who was strong, someone who smiled and laughed.
But all that met her was the darkness. Beguiling darkness which tugged on her anxieties, poisoned her thoughts, memories, and clouded her thinking. It was in the darkness that she saw it all again. The haunting reasons which led her to this place at three in the morning.
There they were readily available, not the happy things she was looking for, and though she tried to fight through them to find the speck of light; it seemed it was no longer there. No longer there because the darkness had its hold on it refusing to let it go. Refusing to let her go… and then she heard them all over again.
The what if’s? The have been’s and the never be’s. She heard the bickering and the shouting, the echoing of slaps and feeling of wet spit across her cheek. She felt the anger and hostility, the hair pulling , the names and faces of each and every one who looked at her disappointingly and the many times they called her, “Failure”. She felt the stares of peers as they laughed in her face, goading her with non-verbal and verbal tactics- stealing or hiding her belongings, shoving her, calling her anything and everything. She felt the endless tears pool her eyes caused by the bullies in her life.
She couldn’t escape them, she couldn’t breathe. Worst of all, she could not find her.
“Where are you Kelly?” She screamed in blinding agony. It didn’t help. The little light was gone. It had been snuffed out just last night it seemed, when her mother had cursed at her.
She was desperate. Her stomach twisted and turned, her legs were wobbling too much that she had to crouch on the ground to stop them. The world was dizzying at the realization: She was lost. Her mind pestering grew louder, mocking her final attempt to escape tightness that constricted her.
You will never get away; you are always tethered to be hurt. It seemed to whisper.
She held her fingers in her brown locks to stop her head from exploding.
And then it stopped and she screamed and screamed till her voice grew hoarse.
The rocks rattled beneath her and something else screamed with her. It was coming; it was what she was waiting for since dawn.
Kelly got up and stepped onto the train tracks, looking right to see steam hastening towards her. And for some reason, just before the end Kelly felt that this didn’t justify the life she could possibly have: it just meant they had won.
